Hospital visits for alcohol poisoning have doubled in six years- with the highest rate among females aged 15 to 19.

With the holiday season on us emergency admissions due to the effects of alcohol, such as liver disease, have also risen by more than 50% in nine years to 250,000 a year in England.

Rates were highest in deprived areas and in the north, and among men aged 45-64, the Nuffield Trust revealed.

The Nuffield Trust said their figures were an underestimate of the impact of drinking because they did not include alcohol -fuelled falls and fights, just illnesses such as alcohol poisoning and liver disease.

Nor do they count people who come to A&E drunk and are then sent home without being treated or admitted as a patient.

Half of all A&E attendances likely to be due to alcohol poisoning – when a person drinks a toxic amount of alcohol, usually over a short period of time – took place on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, peaking between midnight and 2am.

Three in four arrived by ambulance – putting a strain on already stretched resources, said the Nuffield Trust.

Young women aged 15 to 19 were admitted to hospital for alcohol poisoning 1.4 times as often as young men in the same age group.

A&E attendance rates that are likely to be due to alcohol poisoning and emergency hospital admissions linked to alcohol were three to four times higher in the poorest fifth of the population, the figures showed.

The report also reveals the number of people actually being admitted to hospital with alcohol-related problems, such as liver disease.

Men aged between 45 and 64 made up the largest share of this group.

Joint author of the report Claire Currie said: “With the Christmas party season in full swing, it’s worth considering the full burden over-indulgence in alcohol is placing on our NHS, as well as the obvious human cost.

“Our research has uncovered a picture of rising and avoidable activity in hospitals, representing a stark challenge for the Health Service at a time when it’s already great pressure. Hospitals alone cannot tackle this issue – the government must consider measures such as minimum unit pricing, restricting availability and limiting marketing and advertising.”

In England in 2013, approximately 18% of men and 13% of women drank at a level considered to be putting them at increased risk of harm.

In 2013/14, approximately 1 in 20 emergency admissions in England were related to alcohol.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest binge-drinking among young adults in Britain is continuing to fall, and more than a fifth of UK adults now say they do not drink alcohol at all.

A government spokesman said: “People should always drink alcohol responsibly – very busy ambulance services and A&E staff can do without this extra demand.

“The government has taken action to tackle cheap alcohol by banning the lowest priced drinks and we are already seeing fewer young people drinking on a regular basis.”

UK government guidelines on how much alcohol it is safe to drink are unrealistic, largely ignored and should be changed to reflect modern drinking habits.

Men are currently recommended to drink no more than three or four units a day, and women no more than two or three.

But the study found that the guidelines are largely ignored because most people do not drink every day. Instead they drink heavily at the weekend – in order to get drunk.

Many people taking part in the research also found the idea of alcohol “units” confusing as they measured their intake in pints, bottles and glasses.

The results suggested that people think the recommended quantities of drink are unrealistic, as they don’t recognise that many people are motivated to drink to get drunk.

When participants did regulate their drinking, this was usually down to practical issues such as needing to go to work or having childcare responsibilities, rather than health concerns or due to guidance on safe limits.

Researchers found that participants preferred the current Australian and Canadian guidelines, which include separate advice for regular drinking and for single occasion drinking, which were regarded as more relevant and flexible to occasional drinkers.

Australia recommends drinking no more than four standard sized drinks on one occasion, or two drinks a day.

The study was carried out by researchers from the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, which includes the universities of Stirling and Sheffield.

They interviewed focus groups in Scotland and the north of England. The results have been published by the Addiction journal.

The chief medical officers in both England and Scotland are looking at new guidelines to be published next year, and the researchers have been feeding their results to them.

Prof Linda Bauld of the University of Stirling’s Institute for Social Marketing told BBC Scotland that the advice on “safe” alcohol limits was helpful, but needed to be revised.

And she said more emphasis should be put on helping people to drink more sensibly rather than simply telling them what they need to do.

Prof Bauld added: “The Scottish government is trying to push forward with pricing measures, for example, we need to look at marketing, we need to look at glass sizes.”

The amount of alcohol people in England drink has been underestimated according to new research.

Report author Dr Mark Bellis said this was because many studies do not include drinking on special occasions.

More than 6,000 people in England were interviewed for the study.

Accounting for special occasion drinking added more than 120 million UK units of alcohol – equivalent to about 12 million bottles of wine – to the population’s alcohol consumption in England every week, it found.

The results could have important implications for public health, researchers said.

“Nationally, we underestimate how much we drink – and as individuals we can turn a blind eye to our heavier drinking periods when we calculate personal consumption,” said lead scientist Dr Bellis, from Liverpool John Moores University.

“For many people, though, these sessions add substantial amounts of alcohol to their annual consumption and inevitably increase their risks of developing alcohol-related ill health.”

The equivalent of more than three quarters of a bottle of wine- or about three pints of beer per drinker every week goes unaccounted for, he said.

The survey measured a medium glass of 12.5% ABV wine as 2.2 UK units, and a 440ml can of 4.5% ABV beer as 2 UK units, but the amount of alcohol units in drinks varies depending on their size and strength.

Researchers conducted telephone interviews with 6,085 randomly-selected members of the public aged 16 and over in England.

Participants were asked about normal drinking patterns and those outside their usual circumstances, such as summer holidays, bank holidays, and weddings.

Most categories of drinkers, based on age groups and levels of typical consumption, reported increased consumption during holidays or special occasions.

People aged 24-35 drank 18 extra units a week on special occasions, the research suggested. The biggest increase was seen in 25 to 35-year-olds, who had the highest level of typical consumption.

People in this drinking category drank an extra 18 units (144g) of alcohol per week on special occasions, the research suggested.

Last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that people over the age of 15 in the UK drank an average of 10.6 litres of pure alcohol a year – equal to 115 bottles of wine.

According to the Institute of Alcohol Studies, in 2012, men consumed an average of 17 units in the week before they were interviewed, compared with 10.2 units for women.

The NHS could save £27 million a year by changing the way it deals with alcoholic patients.

Alcohol abuse costs the NHS £3.8 billion a year, £145 for each UK household. One in three of all A&E admissions are alcohol related- but on a weekend that can rise to 70%.

Dr Chris Daly, the lead consultant at the unit, believes the NHS is wasting money by often treating people for the effects of alcohol problems without dealing with the underlying problem.

“We were very surprised that a significant proportion, maybe as much as 50% of the patients that we see, were not open to any services and some of them had never been seen by alcohol services before, so it’s almost as if we’re dealing with a different sort of population,” he says.

“These are people who are maybe only using their A&E department as their main source of treatment for their alcohol problems.”

The Radar ward at Chapman Barker is the first of its kind in the UK. Set up three years ago it takes alcohol dependent patients directly from 11 A&E departments across Manchester.

Some 75% of the people who come through the unit do not go back to hospital for at least the next three months.

The Radar ward is split with separate eating and living spaces for both sexes. Four in 10 of the places here are taken by women, from teenagers right up to pensioners in their 80s.

Patients are treated with talking therapies, support and counselling, but also specialist medical care they would not always get in a large hospital.

Around half of all alcohol dependent patients can develop clinical symptoms when they try to quit, including seizures, fits and hallucinations.

Without the right support the most severe cases often end up back in hospital.

An independent analysis of the unit by academics at Liverpool John Moores University published in April 2015 found it saves the NHS £1.3 million a year.

If the same approach was taken across the country the researchers say it could save the NHS £27.5 million in England alone.

This unit has secured funding to operate for another year but the future is always uncertain. The people working there say ignoring these patients will cost the NHS more in the long run.

Health Direct repeats numerous research warnings that alcohol is the drug that causes the most damage to the UK population- so anything that curbs preventable crisis is to be welcomed.

The Police rather than the NHS should be dealling with drunks claims the AnE boss.

Police should crack down on binge drinking to stop hospital staff being distracted by disorderly drunks according to a leading doctor.

Dr Clifford Mann, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, said the “softer approach” used for anti-social drunkenness did not seem to be working. Police could instead increase arrests, convictions and fines, he suggested.

Crime prevention minister Lynne Featherstone said the government was “determined to tackle alcohol-fuelled harm”, which she said cost society around £21 billion a year.

The coalition had improved the powers available to the police and licensing authorities to tackle alcohol-related crime, and had banned the “worst cases of very cheap and harmful alcohol sales”, the Liberal Democrat MP said.

Dr Mann said: “All I am saying at the moment is the softer approach – where we don’t any longer arrest many people for being drunk and disorderly – certainly doesn’t seem to be working.”

He said the number of people arriving at A&E units while drunk was increasing year on year, while the number of licensed premises in the UK was also increasing and alcohol was getting cheaper.

“I think these people, by the nature of the disorder, they are distracting medical and nursing staff from looking after other patients and therefore are wasting public resources,” he said.

“I think they therefore fall into the category of being drunk and disorderly in their behaviour and the police can act to take them away.”

Health Direct agrees with the suggestion. To use the Greens’ parlance of “the polluter should pay”- the drunks should be charged- literally and financially. Until the politicians, police and society in general starts to deal appropriately of issue of people drinking too much alcohol then it is unfair and detrimental to the expect the NHS to pick up the pieces.

Not only would this approach save the NHS money- but the police and courts would make money by fining people who have paid to incapacitate themselves- and who are after all breaking the law.

Some 2.1bn people – about 30% of the world’s population – were overweight or obese, the researchers added.

They said measures that relied less on individual responsibility should be used to tackle the problem.

The report said there was a “steep economic toll”, and the proportion could rise to almost half of the world’s population by 2030.

The financial costs of obesity are growing – for health care and more widely in the economy. By causing illness, obesity results in working days and output lost.

The researchers argued that a range of ambitious policies needed to be considered and a systemic rather than piecemeal response was essential.

The report said the right measures could save the UK’s NHS £760 million a year

A person is considered obese if they are very overweight with a high degree of body fat.

The most common way to assess if a person is obese is to check their body mass index (BMI), which divides your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared. If your BMI is above 25 you are overweight. A BMI of 30-40 is considered obese, while above 40 is very obese. A BMI of less than 18.5 is underweight.

“These initiatives would need to draw on interventions that rely less on individual responsibility and more on changes to the environment,” the report said.

If the right measures were taken there could be long-term savings of £760m a year for the UK’s National Health Service, it added.

The initiatives assessed in the report include portion control for some packaged food and the reformulation of fast and processed food.

It said these were more effective than taxes on high-fat and high-sugar products or public health campaigns. Weight management programmes and workplace fitness schemes were also considered.

The report concluded that “a strategy of sufficient scale is needed as obesity is now reaching crisis proportions”.

The rising prevalence of obesity was driving the increase in heart and lung disease, diabetes and lifestyle-related cancers, it said

The report was produced by McKinsey Global Institute, the business and economics research arm of consultancy firm McKinsey & Company.

Women who drink alcohol and are pregnant at the time are seeking abortions under the misapprehension their babies will suffer foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).The British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS) says there is “no need” for an abortion in such cases, as there is “minimal” damage to babies from isolated episodes of binge drinking by their mothers.

FAS is a rare but serious condition that can cause:

facial deformities

restricted growth

learning and behavioural disorders

a poor memory or short attention span

Statistics for the incidence of the disorder in the UK are not available, but in America, experts say 0.2 to 1.5 cases occur for every 1,000 live births in certain areas of the country.

BPAS says this risk is incredibly small and women should not needlessly fear their behaviour has damaged their baby.

A Danish study in 2012 of more than 1,600 women suggested low-to-moderate drinking was not linked to adverse neurological effects in five-year-olds, but heavy, weekly drinking was associated with a lower attention span in the children.

What are the guidelines for drinking alcohol during pregnancy?

Up until the 1980s, pregnant women were advised to drink stout to boost their iron levels. Official advice today is somewhat different.

Pregnant women should avoid alcohol altogether, says the British government. And if alcohol really must be consumed, it should be limited to the equivalent of one small glass of wine, once or twice a week, it adds.

This advice is mirrored by the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists, (RCOG), which says the safest option for women is not to drink at all for the first 12 weeks and then minimal amounts per week after that.

Meanwhile, national guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence say women should not drink for the first three months of their pregnancy, to minimise the risk of miscarrying.

And after that, it says pregnant mothers should drink only one to two units a week.

Alcohol can disrupt the baby’s normal development in the womb, its health at birth, susceptibility to illness in infancy, childhood, teenage years and later life, warns the RCOG.
Woman and man drinking Binge drinking during pregnancy tends to have an “all or nothing” effect, says the RCOG

It says the effects of drinking are “most harmful” just before pregnancy, due to the way alcohol hampers fertility, in both men and women – the mechanism of which is largely unknown.

Later in pregnancy, the shared blood supply between the mother and her baby via the placenta means that any alcohol that is consumed could easily reach the baby.

Before this – soon after conception and often prior to the woman finding out she is pregnant – could be a different matter.

There is limited evidence about how alcohol affects the baby before there is a direct line between the mother and baby’s blood supply, which happens about week four of pregnancy, the point at which a woman might be aware of missing her period and suspecting she is pregnant.

Understandably, it is ethically difficult to study. This uncertainty means experts often err on the side of caution when providing advice

The jury is largely out about exactly how much alcohol can be drunk during pregnancy, and when.

New draft guidelines from the government are expected to be released in the middle of next year – until then, the Department of Health suggests anybody concerned they have drunk too much alcohol during pregnancy should contact their doctor.

Drink and drug addicts should be treated in rehab treatment centres paid for with a new tax on alcohol.

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) said that by 2024, a ring-fenced “treatment tax” would put up the cost of alcohol bought in shops by 2p per unit- it is among a number of measures recommended to tackle addiction.

The Department of Health said councils’ £5.4 billion public health budgets would help them address alcohol harm.

The CSJ, which seeks to tackle poverty and its causes wants the government to fund treatment centres for 58,000 addicts per year by 2024.

Its report says 300,000 people in England are addicted to opiates and/or crack, 1.6 million are dependent on alcohol and one in seven children under the age of one lives with a substance abusing parent.

The measures set out in its Ambitious for Recovery report include:

Scrapping the drug advice site FRANK, which it says does not send “a strong signal to young people about the risks of experimenting with drugs”

Involving job centres in identifying and helping addicts, with jobseekers “screened for addiction”

Offering benefit claimants with addiction problems support and “abstinence-based” treatment with the threat of sanctions if help is refused

Piloting a charge card for long-term unemployed parents with serious addiction problems to restrict how they spend any income support to essential items only

Doing more to tackle so-called legal highs and educate young people and parents about their dangers

The treatment tax proposal would see a levy of 1p per unit of alcohol added on drinks purchased outside pubs by the end of the next Parliament, rising to 2p by 2024, the CSJ said.

This could mean about 18p added to the price of a bottle of wine after 2024.

The think tank estimated it would raise £155 million a year from 2015, rising to about £520 million a year from 2024.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “We are not considering a tax on particular drinks. Instead, we are reducing alcohol harm by giving local authorities a £5.4 billion budget to help them manage public health issues including alcohol and drug services. We have also banned sales of the cheapest cut price alcohol.”

Local authorities had the best understanding of local needs to be able to assess, plan and deliver alcohol and drug services and treatment in their areas, he added.

Sally Marlow, an alcohol addiction specialist, said there were “problems with the proposal”.

But she added: “If we’re going to sell it, if we’re going to legitimise it and say we sanction alcohol then we have a duty also to say to the people who get into trouble with it, ‘we’ll help you with it – we’ll help you get out of the trouble that you’re in’.”

The UK is lagging behind progress by similar countries on many indicators for ill health, research suggests.Health data over 20 years was compared with figures from 18 other countries in the research published in the Lancet.

Although average life expectancy has risen by four years since 1990, it says the UK needs to increase its strategies for tackling preventable problems such as heart disease and stroke.

The team of experts from the UK and the University of Washington in Seattle said the UK had a high burden of smoking-related illnesses, and greater priority should be given to reducing lung disease.

There was also a large rise in the number of recorded deaths related to Alzheimer’s Disease.

The big five avoidable killers:

Heart disease

Cancer

Stroke

Lung disease

Liver disease

In the 20 years from 1990 to 2010 that The Lancet study examined, average life expectancy increased by 4.2 years in the UK to 79.9 years.

But the premature death rate had hardly changed in the UK for both men and women aged 20-54.

These are linked to avoidable risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and obesity, which are still all too common in the UK, say Chris Murray, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, USA, and colleagues who carried out the analysis of global data.

But progress is being made on conditions like diabetes, where the UK appears to be ahead of many of its European neighbours and other high-income countries like the US and Canada.

Prof Murray says the UK also faces fresh challenges, like its growing burden of disability from alcohol use and a 137% rise in deaths linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

He and his team also acknowledged that making firm conclusions based on data from different countries was inherently problematic – not all record the same information and each has its own unique issues and policies that made interpretation and comparison difficult.

Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics suggested people in the UK were living in good health for longer.

But the UK still measures up poorly compared with other countries – it ranked 12 out of the 19 countries in the Lancet study.

Britons have 68.6 years of healthy life, whereas people in top-ranked country, Spain, have 70.9 years of healthy life on average.

In an accompanying editorial in The Lancet, Edmund Jessop from the UK Faculty of Public Health in London said the UK had done very well in many areas of public health – it had stronger tobacco control than any other country in Europe, for example – but there was still “plenty of room for bold action by politicians”.

Smoking may worsen a hangover after drinking heavily US research concludes- although the reason why is unclear.Researchers asked 113 US students to keep a diary for eight weeks, recording their drinking and smoking habits and any hangover symptoms.

When they drank heavily- around six cans of beer an hour – those who also smoked suffered a worse hangover.

Addiction charities hope this study may motivate smokers to cut down.

The study’s findings are reported in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

One of the paper’s authors, Dr Damaris Rohsenow, from the Centre for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University said: “At the same number of drinks, people who smoke more that day are more likely to have a hangover and have more intense hangovers.”

“And smoking itself was linked to an increased risk of hangover compared with not smoking at all. That raises the likelihood that there is some direct effect of tobacco smoking on hangovers.”

The students from a Midwestern university in the US reported on the number of drinks consumed, number of cigarettes smoked and their hangover symptoms – which included if they felt more tired than usual, had a headache, felt nauseated and had difficulty concentrating.

The researchers then estimated blood alcohol concentration (BAC) which helped control for differences between sexes as it took into account weight and the period over which the student drank alcohol.

After analysing the results, the researchers found that smoking more heavily the day before increased the presence and severity of hangover the next day – but only after a heavy drinking episode, estimated at a BAC of 110mg/dl or greater – the equivalent of around six cans of beer an hour.

The reasons why are unclear- but the study suggests it may down to the toxicological and pharmacological effects of nicotine on the nervous system.